Some more book reviews

The Beatles, Unseen Archives: A very interesting book if you are particularly fond of Beatle’s photos that you haven’t seen before. Most of these were never printed from the negatives until assembled for this book. The text is more then a little sketchy and conforms to the Apple party line as seen in Anthology (which I unreservably recommend for the quotes from the Beatles and others as well as the photos.) The photo captions are good for the most part and reasonably good chronologies are included. As a Beatle picture book it seems to me to be worthwhile although I put the Anthology book and Rolling Stones Beatles book first.

Those Were The Days; an unofficial history of The Beatles Apple organization 1967-2002; Stefan Granados. I suggest this book only if you are truly interested in Apple and its ups and downs. While not everything is there a great deal of it is and some of it I have seen nowhere else. The author interviewed a great many of the people who worked for Apple except for Neil Aspinall and the Beatles themselves. Among other things, he presents a far more balanced picture of Apple’s failures and successes then I’ve seen anywhere else. It is a focused book and the four Beatles are not the focus, although acknowledged of course as the major players. It is also written in a serious deadpan style that will make it hard reading for anyone without specialized interest. Warning, I paid more for this book then I have ever paid for a used book before.

Apple to the Core; Peter Cabe and Robert D. Schonfeld. The 1971 whole truth about Apple. Well, the publication date is correct. Even taking into account that the book was written in 1970, the authors evidently didn’t bother to read Hunter Davies bio — or decided the newspaper versions were better. The only footnotes are to A Cellar Full of Noise, Brian Epstein’s none too accurate autobiography and papers filed in Paul’s suit to break the partnership and kick Klein out of Apple. They evidently did interview a selection of (ex mostly) Apple employees however, in at least one case they report an individual saying something inconsistant with that individual’s later book. I personally don’t think it’s worth the trouble of finding a copy.

The White Book, Ken Mansfield. A very nicely designed book with pages in an assortment of colors, occasionally with lack of sufficient contrast for easy reading. Thye book is more about Mansfield and Apple Records then the Beatles although he knew all of them and there are some interesting remembrances. As a person, Mansfield comes across as attractive and neither artificially humble nor proudly bombastic (as too many other Nems and Apple employee biographies have.) There were some things about Apple Records that I didn’t know although I read it after the book reviewed above. Few of the photos include the Beatles though some of them are interesting for other reasons. I do recommend it to those who are interested in the business of records but not necessarily to those who are Beatle fans.

Neil Aspinall

Talk about mystery figures – what do we know about Neil, easily the person most deserving of the title “5th Beatle”. Very little indeed. He boarded in Pete Best’s home and met the Beatles when they became the “house band” when the Casbah Club Pete’s mother built in the basement of their home opened. He obviously thought the Beatles were a great band. He preferred to spend an anticipated few years on adventure (and hard work) with them rather then the settled and secure life as an accountant, which he was well on his way to achieving. He is very intelligent and competent; he is well organized and could cope with evidently any amount of chaos. The only thing approaching a failure anywhere in what we do know about his was the first incarnation of Apple where he wasn’t given a sufficient warrant of authority to accomplish the job.

We know practically nothing about his personal life past August of 61 except that he gathered a wife, children and lived in London. We know very little about his personality except by deduction and observation of him both in appearances in the Anthology film and the film itself as he was the person who brought it together and to completion. What were his likes and dislikes; did he have a favorite Beatle (Geoffrey Ellis is/was of the opinion that John was Neil’s favorite among the Beatles;) did he prefer Klein to Eastman? We have no idea.

Neil is said to have made the initial arrangements for issuing Paul’s first solo album (by Miles,) which implies that he had not joined the fairly united “hate Paul” front led by John, George and Klein. Did Neil share any information about what was going on at Apple after Klein took over? I have seen no reason to think so. I do think that if Neil had shared any information, the fact that Spector had been chosen to produce Let It Be is something he would have told Paul. Since there is no hint that Paul knew this was happening in advance, it makes it seems unlikely that Neil was passing on any information to Paul.

Klein did try to fire Neil and Mal but John, George and Ringo evidently overruled him in these two cases though that appears to be the only time they did so. Neil must have kept his head down very carefully though while Klein was running things. We can safely assume he did so out of loyalty to the Beatles, perhaps as they were, rather then what was happening between them. Certainly he would have had no problem getting good offers to leave – he undoubtedly would have succeeded if he’d set up as an independent manager.

Some people have criticized his management of Apple accusing him of delaying release of remixes made for CD and/or for MP3 and surround sound. I figure that the Beatles and their relicts (an old word for “widow”) have had a lot to say about what is and isn’t released and when. Certainly it’s clear that he’s taken very good care of their reputation and money all those years. I suspect he retired as much because he was tired and had some things he wanted to do with his time that didn’t include keeping a complicated corporation going. Perhaps he’ll even write a book – although I’m not counting on it.